E-commerce trends: Amazon predictions for 2019

Here at Edge, predicting Amazon's next moves is a big part of our job. But the complex and subtle forces applied by competing channels, supply chains, regulations and consumer interests – each of these factors subject to rapid and surprising changes – makes prediction a broad and long-term game.

To start, let's look at our predictions for what Amazon is going to do in the very near term and how it may affect the e-commerce giant's partners and competitors in the immediate future.

1. Amazon's panda

This time last year, there was a huge market for people willing to write reviews in exchange for coupons or other deals on products listed on Amazon. This was not a black market by any means – until 2016, Amazon had no policy against incentivized reviews – but it was still kept under the radar in an effort to hide review biases from shoppers. Then at the beginning of April 2018, Amazon finally cracked down and banned thousands of reviewers for breaking the company's review policy or using their account for 'commercial purposes.'